Methods and systems for improved lock processing in a storage controller. Storage controllers that provide storage management features such as RAID storage controllers may concurrently process I/O requests received from attached host systems and I/O requests generated internally by the management processing in the controller. Such concurrent processing is coordinated by lock processing that allows affected storage areas to be locked during processing of an I/O operation. Features and aspects hereof allow such lock processing to lock regions flexibly defined by the controller. The flexible definition of the regions to be locked allows variance in the granularity of the locks required. Smaller granularity permits more concurrent I/O requests to be processed.